05.18.22 Jesus is Arrested

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Main Point/Theme: Jesus was betrayed with a kiss and many people in life are simply doing the same instead of loving and serving him through their lives.

Bible Text: Luke 22:47-53

Luke 22:47–53 NIV

While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.”

Introduction

Our actions in our lives continue to lead us through a path in life. Sometimes, those instances guide us to a decision that we realize we cant turn back from. In the case of Judas and the betrayal with a kiss that we just read about we will soon find out that Judas comes to the realization that what he was doing was wrong. We are built of continual choices and those choices will lead us down certain paths. Bad decisions may not seem like a big deal at first, but an accumulation of bad choices can lead you down a place where you realize you've gone too far.

Have any of you ever heard of the Butterfly Effect? It is (in chaos theory) the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.

And what is comes down to is the wind produced by a butterfly can eventually though the continuation of events cause a hurricane in the future somewhere else. Something that small and seemingly insignificant may lead to something catastrophic.

Jesus was betrayed with a kiss and a lot of us in our lives are doing the exact same thing. Showing the love for Jesus in His presence with a kiss of affection but through our lives and attitudes we are doing the same thing. How are you any different?

Judas simply made a continuation of poor decisions over a period of time that eventually led to the death of Jesus Christ.

We look at this story and say to ourselves “How can Judas do this?”, but in reality we do this every day in our lives. We make decisions that are going agains God and His will for our lives, but when we come to Him in prayer, church and life we come to Him in a way that we have done nothing wrong and the bad things we are doing don’t mean much. Obviously we do ask for forgiveness and there are times we go to God in forgiveness, but throughout your day you make choices that lead you to needing forgiveness and it isn’t until that realization hits that you even ask. Judas didn’t realize until it is too late.

Jesus was in a position of prayer and quiet when Judas came up to Him and the disciples. Then the betrayal that has been building up until this point comes to a close with a kiss to Jesus Christ.

Your life is full of decisions that can either lead you down a path you cannot come back from or down a path that will continue to guide you and build you up.

You know what you are deciding throughout your day and you ultimately know if you are doing something that is betraying Jesus Christ in your life. So you ultimately are the one who controls if you fall into this lifestyle in your own life.

This moment in the life of Jesus shows us the character once again of Jesus Christ. During this time there are those who want to fight and do like Peter does when he cuts the mans ear, but Jesus is showing the acceptance of the will of God and stops this all from happening.

You may be sitting here this evening and saying that your decisions are fine and you are not doing anything major that has an impact like this. But I would remind you that these instances that are poor decisions in your life now, can build up and lead you down a path you didn’t want to be on and wont notice until it may be too late.

Judas isn’t so different than people in our world today including us. When you do something wrong and you know you have done wrong, you may choose to try and cover this up by doing more for your parents or being extra loving towards someone. You see when a man has done something wrong, they buy their wife's flowers. Judas in this case knows he is doing something wrong and tries to hide it with a kiss.

Jesus through all of this continued to show love. He even completed His final miracle by healing the ear of the soldier who Peter cut. Jesus will continue to show His love through this time.

This may be challenging for you to think about and think about betraying Jesus in your own life, but what we can do is learn from others and the mistakes of others in order to identify these things in our own lives before it is too late for us. We get to see how things happened to Jesus and how people like Judas betrayed Him which will allow us to identify this in our own lives.

Through this passage we can really see the absence of violence that shows the confidence and sovereignty (supreme power/authority). A day will come when Jesus will do battle for us, but for now we need to be like Jesus in this moment and show love, compassion.

You are young and through this time in your life you are creating your character. What will your character be defined by? What will your character look like?

My life during my early years could have easily turned down the wrong path and it was going in that direction. Luckily though I found Jesus before I was unable to turn or before I made a decision that I could not turn away from. Now it is your time to start make those decisions and see which direction you want to be led by.

Do you want to be like Judas and live a life of betrayal through your actions, or show compassion and love like Jesus Christ?

God is showing His sovereignty through this time. There is confidence in Jesus and trusting the will of God and knowing that through it all God will come out victorious.

We can see here the example set by Jesus Christ and through this example we see how even through the betrayal being faced with, Jesus responded in a way that continues to show His character.

Remember that throughout the whole life of Jesus we are seeing the example being set forth to us through the life of Jesus Christ. Because of this we have the example to follow in our own lives. We need to simply do the same things through our lives and live with love and service in our hearts in the same way Jesus did.

Clearly we see through last week that even the simple times and commands we face we can fail at, with the disciples falling asleep. We need this example of Jesus living through this troubling time and following the will of the Father so we too can do this in our own lives.

Everything through the life of Jesus Christ and the passage today is an example for us to follow, a blueprint. Through this example we should choose to live the way that Jesus did instead of continuing to live in the way Judas did.

You may think the small things in life that you do that are bad may not be that big of a deal. But enough of those things can collectively turn into something too big for you to handle. We can choose to follow Jesus or continue to betray Him with a kiss like Judas. We can continue to hide behind small acts of service our lives of sin. We can choose to follow a different path.

The more the world throws our way, the more distracted we are for what is right in front of us. The Word of God, the example of Jesus Christ are all things we have that show us the direction we need to take our lives.

The bible is our guide and the life of Jesus Christ is our example. So lets live our lives according to the example of Jesus Christ.

Simple put… you can live like Judas or you can live like Jesus, but not both. And you can follow the example of Judas or Jesus as well, but the question is which small choices will you make now that will impact you in the future.

Let’s Pray

Dinner Talk questions:

Thursday

What are things in my life that I should change to be more like the example of Jesus?

Friday

Is there things I see now that over time can be big set backs in my life and my walk with Jesus Christ?

Saturday

Who am I living like? Jesus or Judas and what can I do to make sure it is Jesus?

Sunday

Can you see the evidence of God’s sovereignty in this weeks passage?

Monday

Are there things you notice are betraying Jesus Christ in your life?

Tuesday

What can you do differently in your life to be an example of Jesus Christ?

Wednesday

As we are coming to a close on the life of Jesus, are you seeing the example He has given us? Are you following it?